You Need to Know These Things

The World of the Millennials (People aged 18-29)
According to a study conducted by Reason Rupe, nearly three-fourths of Millennials (people ages 18 to 29) believe the government should guarantee food and shelter for everyone, and more than half say it should guarantee a college education. Two-thirds of these same Millennials believe that "when something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful." About 73 percent believe "people should be allowed to keep what they produce, even if there are others with greater needs," but 58 percent also believe the government should "spend more on financial assistance to the poor, even if it leads to higher taxes."

There's more: Seven out of 10 Millennials believe the government should mandate health care, but more than half are unwilling to pay more for health insurance so the poor could get coverage. While 58 percent of respondents believe cutting taxes would help the economy, two-thirds think it'd help to raise taxes on the wealthy.

An earlier poll by Pew also found some inconsistencies: While they're the most likely demographic to be a single parent, they're also the least likely to approve of single parenting. While Millennials despise political parties more than anyone, they also gave Congress its highest approval rankings.

"Some of these positions suggest, rather than prove, utter incoherence," writes Derek Thompson for The Atlantic. "For example, you can technically support (a) reducing the overall tax burden and (b) raising taxes on the wealthy by raising the investment tax and absolving the bottom 50 percent of Social Security taxes. Somehow, I think what's happening is simpler than young people doing the long math of effective tax rates. I think they're just confused.

"Overall, Millennials offer the murky impression of a generation that doesn't really understand basic economics," he concludes. "To be fair, neither do most Americans." (Vox, The Atlantic)

Tweet Wisely; Some People are Going Crazy
Zayn Malik of the singing group One Direction recently tweeted #FreePalestine—a message that was favorited 200,000 times and triggered several death threats toward Malik.
He's the latest in a long line of celebrities who have tweeted about the conflict in Gaza: In almost all instances, a backlash followed, and some celebrity tweeters later apologized or claimed the tweet was a mistake.

Writes Lily Rothman of Time: "No matter what one thinks about Israel, it's hard to deny that (a) the subject is controversial, and (b) Twitter (or a symbolic accessory, or a product endorsement deal) isn't exactly a great place to express a nuanced thought about a complicated topic…In a time when people [such as] Malik and Rihanna have a direct line to their legions of fans, they're all one click away from saying something they don't really mean, or saying something they think they mean but haven't really thought through. Safer, then, not to say anything. If the point of being a celebrity is to please fans, it's pretty clear that Tweeting about Israel is not the way to do it." (Time)

Young People Need to Be independent of the Internet
There are now efforts afoot to help teens and youth—notoriously comfortable with the Internet and all its many, many social networking sites—become a little more skeptical of them all. At least one pundit believes the most effective way to imbue a little skepticism is by taking a page out of the non-smoking advocate's playbook: Appeal to a teen's inherent need for independence.

"They took a page from cigarette companies' own playbook, tapping into adolescents' fierce desire for autonomy," writes Slate's Annie Murphy Paul. "Instead of flaunting that independence by smoking, these teen-whisperers suggested, do it by resisting the manipulations of Big Tobacco."

It's pretty clear that many social network sites manipulate their users, which naturally rubs against a teen's rebellious nature and desire for independence. Paul says it's just as important to teach youth about the dangers of the Internet as tobacco.

"Granted, clicking a link or posting a status update won't give teenagers lung cancer," she writes. "But the undisciplined use of technology can waste their time, fragment their focus, and interfere with their learning. Just like their health, young people's attention is a precious resource, and they should be empowered to resist the companies that would squander it." (Slate)

Scheming Social Networks

The news has been rife with stories about how social networks have been experimenting with its users. Facebook confessed that it meddled with the newsfeeds of 700,000 of its users, ostensibly to see if the posts they read would impact the positivity of the users' own posts. (Conclusion: It did.) Then, in late July, the dating website OKCupid said it fiddled with users' profiles all the time—sometimes matching users with people the site knew were bad matches.

In a post called "We Experiment on Human Beings!" OKCupid's cofounder Christian Rudder made a startling admission that, really, we should've all known already.

"Guess what, everybody," he wrote, "if you use the Internet, you're the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That's how websites work." (OKCupid, Time)